On Wednesday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” NPR National Correspondent Frank Langfitt stated that in the Congress Heights area of D.C. some of the people he spoke to told him “crime is worse than the statistics show,” because some “have given up reporting to police because they feel a lot of crimes go unpunished.”
Langfitt stated that in the U Street area, people he spoke to “said crime didn’t seem that bad to them.”
Langfitt further stated that after talking to people in the U Street area, “I went across the Anacostia River to Congress Heights. This is among the poorest areas of the city, vast majority of the population is black. And, also, the D.C. Police say this is part of an area with among the highest crime — violent crime rates in the city. But unlike U Street, people in Congress Heights said crime is a really big problem there, shootings, robbery, burglaries. In fact, some say crime is worse than the statistics show, because, many say, have given up reporting to police because they feel a lot of crimes go unpunished.”
He added that “there was a general sense that any greater armed presence would be a good thing” but people in Congress Heights were skeptical that any federal agents would be in their neighborhood because many there view the dispatching of federal agents as just about style, and people said that it would be better to increase federal funding to hire more police.
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